Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (born March 14, 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer , † May 3, 1961 in Paris ) was a French philosopher and phenomenologist .

Life

Merleau-Ponty was raised Catholic mainly by his mother, with whom he remained closely associated throughout his life . He finished school with a baccalauréat . From 1926 he made the acquaintance of Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Hyppolite .

In 1930 he made his agrégation in philosophy. He was particularly influenced by the writings of Léon Brunschvicg and Henri Bergson . The writer, philosopher and historian Émile Bréhier and Jean Laporte also shaped him. From 1931 to 1935 Merleau-Ponty was a teacher in Beauvais and Chartres . This was followed from 1935-1939 a work as a tutor at the École normal supérieure . 1935–1937 he also worked on the magazine Esprit , in 1935 he heard Hegel lectures from Alexandre Kojève and began studying Karl Marx .

From 1939 to 1940 Merleau-Ponty worked as a philosophy teacher at various high schools in Paris. In 1944/1945 he succeeded Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris . In 1945 he received his doctorate. This was followed by a university career in Lyon , where he taught as a professor of philosophy. In 1948 he co-founded the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle in Paris. From 1949 to 1952 he worked as a professor for child psychology and education at the Sorbonne . In 1952 Merleau-Ponty became professor of philosophy at the famous Collège de France . In 1955 he broke with Sartre and Beauvoir. In 1959 he devoted himself increasingly to work on The Visible and the Invisible , which he could no longer complete because he died on May 3, 1961. He is buried on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, together with his mother and his wife Suzanne, who died in 2010.

Grave on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris

plant

Along with Paul Ricœur , Simone de Beauvoir , Jean-Paul Sartre , Gabriel Marcel , Emmanuel Levinas and Aron Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty is one of the most important representatives of French phenomenology .

Because of his close ties to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir , he is often thought of as an existentialist ; Although existentialism flows into Merleau-Ponty's work, it can not be assigned to this philosophical direction because of its (rather cautious) rejection of a definition of existence as absolute or isolated . Despite all the differences between the philosophical drafts, many of his phenomenological analyzes are similar to those of e.g. B. Jean-Paul Sartres congruent.

Merleau-Ponty's philosophy allows phenomenology to enter into an intensive dialogue with the thinking styles of structuralism , gestalt theory , psychology and various philosophical traditions of thought. The focus of his extremely diverse and far-reaching intellectual work is the role of the body , as the human being experiences himself and the world.

Basic idea

After an intensive discussion with Husserl and his assistant and student Heidegger , Merleau-Ponty offers a "third way" to illuminate the fundamental connection between existence and the world by not seeing the fundamental constitution of the subject as Husserl does in the intentionality of his consciousness, and also not in his being as Dasein in the sense of Heidegger, but in his corporeality, which he works out in an oscillating conversation between empiricism and intellectualism . He sets the original world experience to be understood from it against the worldly being of Dasein in Heidegger and against the constitution of the world in Husserl, which he regards as a retrospective reconstruction and considers it to be far removed from a phenomenological description . At this point in particular, the positive, critical expansion of phenomenology by Merleau-Ponty is evident. One of the most important consequences that he draws from studying Husserl's phenomenology is the impossibility of complete reduction . Important terms of the philosophy Merleau-Pontys and for their understanding are constitutive

• Ambiguity
• Body (le corps propre)
• Intentionality ,

which are used by the philosopher in the specific meaning of Husserl's phenomenology. Ambiguity in particular proves to be a problematic term, within which Merleau-Ponty once again distinguished between good and bad ambiguity in his later thinking . Merleau-Ponty takes up the concept of “ functioning intentionality ” coined by Husserl , which takes place behind the conscious focus on objects. It remains hidden from self-reflection of the ego for a long time, since it is a condition for the possibility of self-reflection . Accordingly, the functioning intentionality is a fundamental prerequisite, immanent in human nature, also for the intentionality of consciousness.

Ambiguity

The body of the world is an expression that Merleau-Ponty coined for the intermediate area between subject and object. He summarized this body thematically with the term " ambiguity " (double meaning).

"Man does not face the world, but is part of life in which the structures, the meaning and the making of all things are based." ( The visible and the invisible )

A key example of this ambiguity is that of the self-touching hands. In this phenomenon the ambigue experience emerges. Since we are neither pure consciousness for ourselves - because then we would perceive ourselves completely in our fullness - nor pure thing - because then we would be completely absorbed in what we are (see also Sartre ) - our being is both oscillating, as the experience of “touching what is touched” shows. Like a picture puzzle , we are to be sought in an intermediate realm of meaning, in which there is not one-sided dissolution, but the endurance of the open. We grasp our own hand, but we do not fully grasp it. According to Merleau-Ponty, the body is ambiguous because it is neither a pure thing nor pure consciousness .

Being does not show itself in its fullness, it eludes complete transparency (see " Shadowing " in Husserl ). The limits of perception are made clear by the correspondence between the visible and the invisible. The invisible is not something that has not yet been seen, but a fundamental concealment (see also Heidegger and his concept of “ aletheia ”) that is based on seeing itself ( perspectivity ). An object is given on a background that is not thematic. An object seen in all perspectives at the same time is unthinkable or even inconceivable.

body

For Merleau-Ponty, the body is the mediating authority between mind and body. Since, as mentioned above, it moves between the two positions empiricism and intellectualism , body is the term for the place where man is based in the world. Methodically, Merleau-Ponty proceeds in such a way that he uses the example of the considerations of finished theories of empiricism and intellectualism to show their consequences and implications, so that he reaches the limits of their statements and thematizes their carelessness. In this context he brings a wealth of examples from psychopathology , in particular descriptions by the two gestalt psychologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein . By using these cases to trace the explanatory models of psychology , but also philosophy, he shows their limitation as an explanation. Using these descriptions and analyzes, Merleau-Ponty arrives at his concept of the body as a mediator between these two positions: the body refers to a “third dimension” beyond empiricism and intellectualism. For example, he comes to the conclusion that spatiality should not be understood as an extract of an intellectual achievement, but rather:

“Finally my body is so little a fragment of space for me that there would be no space for me at all if I had no body” (PhW 127).

With this, Merleau-Ponty turns everyday convictions on its head, which perceive one's own body as part of the room. However, he counters this by stating that, if this were the case, we would have to have abstract, cognitive access to the world - but the phenomenological analyzes contradict this. On the contrary: the space that surrounds us seems to be the result of our original bodily anchoring in the world. Because we are body, we have space. So z. B. the geometry "only" a consequence of a "restriction" of our lifeworld spatial relationship.

Intentionality

Husserl's concept of intentionality is constitutive for Merleau-Ponty's thinking. In Husserl's work, intentionality has the following characteristics, but Merleau-Ponty only adopted some of them:

• Being directed towards a thing, a state of affairs, etc.
• Intentionality is divided into what the consciousness is directed at ( noema ) and the intentional consciousness itself ( noesis ).

So far, both authors agree. Merleau-Ponty considers the following three aspects to be problematic:

• On the noesis side, a distinction can again be made between types of experience : the intentional states of consciousness and the mere sensation data , which are not themselves intentional, but rather act as "carriers" of the states of consciousness (which, however, do not, as Husserl sometimes formulates it in an ambiguous way, sense data in the sense represent an empiricism [Husserl revises this concept again in his late philosophy]).
• These acts constitute the stream of consciousness , which in turn, according to Husserl,
• refers to an ego as the identity pole of consciousness (this is exactly where Merleau-Ponty's later criticism begins).

The considerations of a horizon and the resulting concept of the world can be accepted again by Merleau-Ponty as follows:

• On the noema side there is an object that is intended by a sense and a meaning.
• The object is understood against the background of a necessary series of non-thematized structures of meaning which Husserl calls "horizons" . The synthesis of all horizons is the world.

Merleau-Ponty criticizes Husserl's phenomenological concept of intentionality, where it is understood as a direction towards an object. Instead, he sets an original intentionality ahead , in a "physical relation of oneself is" to the phenomena that vorprädikativ and whose term closely to the concept of life-world inspired Husserl.

Major works

Particularly in the structure of behavior and the phenomenology of perception , Merleau-Ponty attempts to overcome the classic dichotomies of mind and body , intellectualism and objectivism . In The Visible and the Invisible , a posthumously published collection of texts by Merleau-Ponty, the perceiving body recedes as a central thought.

"The phenomenology of perception"

In his main work “ The Phenomenology of Perception ”, Merleau-Ponty provides a complete phenomenological analysis of the world with which he would like to bring Husserl's demand “To the things themselves” to an end. Merleau-Ponty's starting point is the description of experience prior to any epistemological construction. According to Merleau-Ponty, the world is a phenomenon that needs to be described rather than constructed. This is accompanied by the assumption that objective knowledge is not possible without any prejudice . For Merleau-Ponty there are no independent, uniform sensations, impressions or knowledge that would only be put into context afterwards through associations. The experience of the world, the perception, does not result from a subsequent compilation of previously independent elements, rather the world represents an original totality preceding everything. The scientific analysis of individual moments is also based on this preceding totality.

Perception can therefore neither be explained by empiricism nor by an idealistic transcendental philosophy, since both abstract from it and forget that perception is concrete and tied to a meaning that arises in the relationship of one's own body to the world. The object-horizon structure is characteristic of this relationship: All objects only appear on a background, in front of a horizon. The horizon, however, is, unlike the respective object, transcendent (just as a correct horizon can never be reached). Thus, even in the experience of the world, it cannot be viewed as a separate object, since the body is always in the middle of it and communicates with it through its behavior. Accordingly, the world can not be limited to separate properties, but always forms a milieu , the components of which are interconnected, as it is z. B. does not give the mere property red, but only a red carpet or sky.

This corresponds to the representation of perception as a phenomenological field in which what is perceived refers to one another and is dependent on one another and which is appropriate to the posture and movement of the body and can only be understood from this point of view. For example, spatiality is never experienced as rigid-geometric, but is always determined by the situation of one's own body, and the perception of things is always determined by their significance, their meaning, for one's own body, while an objective perception is only abstract, thus reductionist, can be thought. But this meaningfulness is not subjectivism , because the body is always engaged in the world that transcends it, and dealing with others who are not just objects is an inescapable dimension of existence. In order to do justice to it, a new cogito is needed that no longer posits a Cartesian subject, but rather uses the experience of time as a mode of perception, not as an objective process, which understands the I as a phenomenon situated in a world, in the world as I am tied to each other because, without one causing the other, they motivate each other throughout.

Late Philosophy

The visible and the invisible

In the late philosophy, the approach is radicalized. Attention shifts from the perspective of bodily personal experience to an ontological reflection on the fact that a meaningful world can only exist as a sensually embodied world. Instead of the body, the focus is on “meat”, called “chair” by Merleau-Ponty , whereby the term “meat” stands for the attempt to “change difference and identity in a new, ie. H. not thinking in a subject-centered way ”. Here, too, particularly in the work The Visible and the Invisible , Merlau-Ponty's motivation to “give expression to the still mute experience” comes to light. Merleau-Ponty assumes a chiasmus (interweaving) of body and world in the flesh (chair):

“... the world seen is not 'in' my body, and my body is ultimately not 'in' the visible world: as flesh that has to do with flesh, the world neither surrounds it nor is it surrounded by it . […] There is a reciprocal integration and interweaving of one with the other. ” (Merleau-Ponty ²1994, p. 182)

The “meat” (chair) is here neither to be confused with one's own body nor with mere materiality. Rather, it is the texture of all sensory experience. The "flesh" is exactly the point at which body and world meet: the body is always part of the visible world - at the same time the world is always experienced through the body.

“The flesh is not matter, it is not spirit, it is not substance. To designate it, it would take the old term 'element' in the sense in which it was used earlier to speak of water, air, earth or fire. ” (Merleau-Ponty ²1994, p. 183 )

In this context Merleau-Ponty repeatedly cites the example of the left hand touching the right. At the moment of touch, the hand feels inside and outside at the same time - it reveals itself as belonging to the world at the same time (since it can be touched and seen from the outside ) and felt from within . At the same time, this state always changes at the last moment; it is impossible to be both subject and object of an experience at the same time. On this side of the alternative between the physical thing and the experienced body, the flesh in Merleau-Ponty's experimental late work stands for an almost ontological matrix.

Effect and reception

In contrast to his famous colleague Jean-Paul Sartre , Merleau-Ponty never achieved its broad impact. The examination of his thinking remained essentially limited to the university context, not least because of the complex subject matter and the way of thinking and expression that readers find difficult to understand. Recently, however, Merleau-Ponty's reception has increased in areas that deal thematically with body-soul dualism . In particular, this happens in the directions of body psychotherapy (also deliberately called "body psychotherapy or body therapy" by some representatives) and integrative therapy and integrative movement therapy by Hilarion Petzold , with which he sets himself apart from the biological concept of organism by Fritz Perls and his gestalt therapy and creates points of contact with the thinking of the Philosopher Michel Foucault in the field of " body disciplines ". This branch of thought gives rise to connections to feminist philosophy . Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is also the basis for the perception theory of Alva Noës and Kevin O'Regans and for the technical theory of Gilbert Simondons . After all, his essays on the painter Paul Cézanne , “The Doubt Cézanne” (1945) and “The Eye and the Spirit” (1961), influenced modern art history. The older of the two essays in particular is now considered the standard work of Cézanne research. The work of Merleau-Ponty was taken up by Herbert Plügge, a representative of the Heidelberg school of anthropological medicine around Viktor von Weizsäcker and Richard Siebeck and thus influenced this school.

Hannah Arendt speaks of the “value of the surface” and of a “reversal of the metaphysical hierarchy” by referring to Merleau-Ponty. Only what is on the surface can appear. By this she means the priority of a philosophical and scientific search for the thing in itself which, according to Kant, is unknowable because it does not appear. Behind the appearances that turn out to be “mere appearance” in the tireless search for truth, there is always a new appearance. The term “superficiality” is thus relativized, as are terms such as “exploring” and “justifying”. She quotes Merleau-Ponty: "There is no appearance without appearance, ... every appearance is the counterpart of an appearance."

Political commitment

For a long time, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was overshadowed by Jean-Paul Sartre , with whom he was linked on the one hand by the intention of concretising Husserl's phenomenology and on the other by the will to interpret the political situation after 1945 and to become politically active. In the literature on Merleau-Ponty, however, his political writings have been largely excluded ( Humanism and Terror from 1947, Sense and Non-Sense 1948 and The Adventures of Dialectics 1955).

His writing Humanism and Terror. An attempt on communism was a response to Arthur Koestler's book Solar Eclipse , in which the latter published his personal reckoning with communism following the great Stalinist purges and show trials . Merleau-Ponty viewed the problem of communist violence as a political phenomenon. The point is not that communism does not respect the rules established by liberal thinking, because these are only humane in the abstract, but not in practice. The liberalism is based on the exploitation of colonies and twenty wars. His humane ideas are a liberal mystification, because without his acts of violence, liberalism is inconceivable. Rather, it is a question of whether the violence that communism wields is revolutionary and therefore capable of establishing human relationships between people in real life. Using Bukharin and Trotsky as an example, he traced the historical role of terror in communism and the possibilities of Marxist humanism to overcome this terror. However, the policy of the Stalinist Soviet Union has ceased to be revolutionary and progressive and is practicing terror as an end in itself. This font, originally created in 1946/1947, was reissued in 1966 by edition suhrkamp after the massive American involvement in the Vietnam War , in which many texts appeared that were received and discussed in the student movement of the 1960s .

In the broad field of phenomenology, the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty seeks a fundamental redefinition of the relationship between consciousness and nature. Merleau-Ponty expects the inclusion of the phenomenon of the body in philosophical reflection to overcome the alternative of 'realism-idealism'. He tries to overcome the dualism of body and mind by phenomenologically describing the whole that humans experience. The body occupies an excellent position in Merleau-Ponty's philosophical reflection and is therefore the basis for a redefinition of existence and the world. However, he prefers an indirect method of approaching phenomena. He is less interested in practical consequences than in following an ethos of perception.

Fonts

year	Original French title	German (English) title
1942	La Structure du comportement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942)	The structure of the behavior. Translated and with a preface by Bernhard Waldenfels. Berlin / New York: de Gruyter 1976.
1945	Phenomenology de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945)	Phenomenology of perception. Translated with a preface by Rudolf Boehm. Berlin: de Gruyter 1966/1974
1933-1946	Le primat de la perception et ses conséquences philosophiques (Lagrasse: Éditions Verdier, 1996)	The primacy of perception. Edited and with an afterword by Lambert Wiesing. Translated by Jürgen Schröder. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2003 (French 1933–1946)
1947	Humanisme et terreur, essai sur le sondème communiste (Paris: Gallimard, 1947)	Humanism and terror. Translated by Eva Moldenhauer . Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum 1990
1948	Sens et non-sens (Paris: Nagel, 1948, 1966)	Sense and non-sense. Translated by Hans-Dieter Gondek. Munich: Fink 2000
1948	Causeries 1948 (Paris: Seuil, 2002)	Causeries 1948. Radio lectures. Edited by Ignaz Knips. With a foreword by Bernhard Waldenfels. Translated by Joan-Catharine Ritte, Ignaz Knips and Emmanuel Alloa. Cologne: Salon 2006.
1949-1950	Conscience et l'acquisition du langage (Paris: Bulletin de psychologie, 236, vol.XVIII, 3-6, Nov. 1964)	Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language trans. by Hugh J. Silverman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
1949-1952	Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne: résumé de cours, 1949–1952 (Grenoble: Cynara, 1988)	Seeds of reason. Lectures at the Sorbonne 1949–1952. Edited and with an afterword by Bernhard Waldenfels. Translated by Antje Kapust. Munich: Fink 1994.
1951	Les Relations avec autrui chez l'enfant (Paris: Center de Documentation Universitaire, 1951, 1975)	'The Child's Relations with Others' trans. by William Cobb, in The Primacy of Perception ed. by James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 96-155.
1953	Éloge de la philosophie, Leçon inaugurale faite au Collège de France, Le jeudi 15 janvier 1953 (Paris: Gallimard, 1953)	In Praise of Philosophy trans. by John Wild and James M. Edie , (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963)
1955	Les Aventures de la dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1955)	The adventures of the dialectic. Translated by Alfred Schmidt and Herbert Schmitt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1968
1958	Les Sciences de l'homme et la phenoménologie (Paris: Center de Documentation Universitaire, 1958, 1975)	'Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man' trans. by John Wild in The Primacy of Perception ed. by James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 43-95.
1959-1960	- ??	The nature. Recordings of lectures at the Collège de France 1956–1960. Edited and annotated by Dominique Séglard. Trans. V. Mira Köller. Munich: Fink 2000.
1960	Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1960)	-
1960	Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960)	Character. Ed. And with an introduction by Christian Bermes. Translated by Barbara Schmitz, Hans Werner Arndt and Bernhard Waldenfels. Hamburg: Meiner 2007 (French 1960).
1961	L'Œil et l'esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1961)	The eye and the mind. Philosophical essays. Ed. And with an introduction by Christian Bermes . Hamburg: Mine 2003
1964	Le Visible et l'invisible, suivi de notes de travail Edited by Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964)	The visible and the invisible. Edited and with an afterword by Claude Lefort . Translated by Regula Giuliani and Bernhard Waldenfels. Munich: Fink ²1994
1968	Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952–1960 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968)	Lectures I. Writing for the candidacy at the Collège de France. Praise the philosophy. Lecture summaries (Collège de France 1952–1960). The human sciences and phenomenology. Translated and provided with a foreword by Alexandre Métraux. Berlin / New York: de Gruyter 1973.
1969	La Prose du monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1969)	The prose of the world. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Regula Giuliani with an introduction by Bernhard Waldenfels . Munich: Fink 1993

literature

• Sarah Bakewell: The existentialist café - freedom, being and apricot cocktails . CH Beck, 4th edition Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406 697647 .
• Hans Bischlager: The opening of blocked perception. Merleau-Ponty's radical reflection . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8498-1155-6 .
• David Morris, Kym MacLaren (Eds.): Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self. Ohio University Press, Athens 2015, ISBN 978-0-8214-4496-2 .
• Frank König: In-depth being. Perception and physicality with Paul Celan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. WINTER University Press, Heidelberg 2014. ISBN 978-3-8253-6299-7 .
• David Abram : Under the spell of sensual nature - the art of perception and the more-than-human world , thinkOya, Klein Jasedow 2012.
• Emmanuel Alloa, Adnen Jdey (ed.): Du sensible à l'oeuvre. Esthetiques de Merleau-Ponty. La Lettre Volée, Bruxelles 2012, ISBN 978-2-87317-379-1 .
• Christian Bermes : Maurice Merleau-Ponty for an introduction. 3rd, updated Edition. Junius, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-88506-399-5 .
• Emmanuel Alloa: La résistance du sensible. Merleau-Ponty critique de la transparence. Kimé, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-84174-442-8 .
• Wolfgang Faust: Adventure of Phenomenology. Philosophy and politics with Maurice Merleau-Ponty . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3532-6 .
• Stephan Günzel: Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Work and effect. An introduction. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2007 (reprint: 2015), ISBN 3-85132-464-1 .
• Ted Toadvine (Ed.): Merleau-Ponty. Critical assessments. 4 vols. Routledge, London 2006.
• Taylor Carman (Ed.): The Cambridge companion to Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 2005.
• Regula Giuliani (Ed.): Merleau-Ponty and the cultural studies. Fink, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7705-3478-6 .
• Paul Good: Maurice Merleau-Ponty. An introduction. Parerga, Düsseldorf / Bonn 1998.
• Bernhard Waldenfels: Phenomenology in France. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-28244-1 .
• Bernhard Waldenfels: In the networks of the lifeworld. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-518-28145-3 .
• Patrick Burke, Jan Van der Veken (eds.): Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspectives. Kluwer, Dordrecht u. a. 1993 (Phenomenologica 129).
• Thomas W. Busch (Ed.): Merleau-Ponty, hermeneutics, and postmodernism. State Univ. of New York Press, Albany 1992.
• Alexandre Métraux, Bernhard Waldenfels (ed.): Bodily reason. Traces of Merleau-Ponty's thinking. Fink, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7705-2315-6 .
• Regula Giuliani-Tagmann: Language and Experience in the Writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1983.
• Ulrich Melle: The problem of perception and its transformation in a phenomenological setting. Investigations into the phenomenological theories of perception by Husserl, Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty. Nijhoff, The Hague, et al. a. 1983, ISBN 90-247-2761-8 .
• Bernhard Waldenfels: The scope of behavior. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980.

Web links

• Literature by and about Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Maurice Merleau-Ponty  in the German Digital Library
• Bernard Flynn:  Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Chiasmi International (trade journal)
• Jack Reynolds:  Entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• The Merleau Ponty Circle (English)
• European side
• Justin Tauber: Reading Merleau-Ponty: Cognitive science, pathology and transcendental phenomenology , Diss. Sydney 2007.
• Lukas Wieselberg: Philosopher Merleau-Ponty born 100 years ago , basic information about Merleau-Ponty at orf.at.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ E. Alloa 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Meat and Difference' in body. History and topicality of a concept, Tübingen: UTB / Mohr Siebeck 2012, 37-51, here p. 38.
2. ↑ Cf. Hilarion Petzold, Johanna Sieper, J. (2012a): “Leiblichkeit” as “Informed Body” embodied and embedded - body-soul-spirit-world relationships in integrative therapy. Sources and concepts on the “psychophysical problem” and body therapy practice . In: Petzold, HG (2012f): The images of people in psychotherapy. Interdisciplinary perspectives and the models of the therapy schools . Vienna: Krammer, 243-321. http://www.fpi-publikation.de/images/stories/downloads/polyloge/petzold-sieper-2012a-leiblichkeit-informierter-leib-embodied-embedded-konzepte-polyloge-21-2012.pdf September 12, 2015.
3. ↑ See e.g. B. Dorothea Olkowski, Gail Weiss (Eds.): Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-271-02918-8 ; Gayle Salamon: Review , in: NDPR September 17, 2008.
4. ^ Rhein Neckar WIKI: Herbert Plügge
5. ↑ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l'invisible, Ed .: Claude Lefort, Paris: Gallimard, 1964, p. 63.
6. ↑ Hannah Arendt : From the life of the spirit . Vol. I. Thinking [1971] R. Piper & Co., Munich 1979, ISBN 3-492-02486-6 ; P. 36 on res. “Merleau-Ponty”.